English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Cerberus

00:00

@tchrist I like!

tchrist

00:11

When I tried to get photos copied in a great hurry the night before Dad’s funeral at Walmart of all God-awful shitholes, they gave me a hell of a lot of hassle for “trying to illegally copy copyrighted photos taken by a professional photographer”. Nearly strangled them.

Photos like that one.

I had never in my life been confronted with such stupidity about getting prints made.

Turns out their metric is whether there is a blurred background.

Idiots.

I normally use pro shops, of course, so never get such bullshit.

But Wallmart, what do you expect? Sheesh.

Obviously, in a non-pro photo, either nothing is in focus or everything is.

If only part is, then it is professional and cannot be copied.

Pure idiots.

God forbid that anyone should actually use a camera to take a photo with instead of a pseudo-phone!

KitFox

"This doesn't look like crap and you're trying to copy it at WalMart, ergo it must not be yours."

tchrist

The depth of field on that last kitty photo is something like ⅖ of an inch.

But you can see the snow on the trees out the back window in his eye.

And that is the reduced version, even.

Robusto

@tchrist Back in 1995 my agency was trying to put up a "multimedia Christmas card" on all the (then) major outlets: Compuserve, AOL, etc. I did the design and programming and recorded "The 12 Days of Christmas" using my synth setup. Long story short, AOL refused to put it up because I couldn't prove to them that I "owned" the rights to the music. Even after I told them it had been in the public domain for a couple of centuries and that I was the performing artist. Some people are just stupid.

tchrist

Most, even.

KitSox

Half of the population is below average in any case.

tchrist

00:23

And the average is pretty fucking stupid.

Sigmata away, even.

It’s a problem.

Which I believe can be cured with lead supplements.

Robusto

The Romans tried that.

Defrutum

Defrutum, carenum, and sapa were reductions of must used in Ancient Roman cuisine. They were made by boiling down grape juice or must (freshly squeezed grapes) in large kettles until it had been reduced to two-thirds the original volume, carenum; half the original volume, defrutum; and one-third, sapa. The main culinary use of defrutum was to help preserve and sweeten wine, but it was also added to fruit and meat dishes as a sweetening and souring agent and even given to food animals such as suckling pig and duck to improve the taste of their flesh. Defrutum was mixed with garum to make the...

> A 2009 History Channel documentary produced a batch of historically-accurate defrutum in lead-lined vessels and tested the liquid, finding a lead level of 29,000 ppb, a staggering 2,900 times higher than the current US drinking water standards of 10 ppb

tchrist

Yes, that was my intended reference.

Because either you give lead supplements to the rest of the population until it kills them, or take them yourself until your sigma-delta isn’t so gappy.

tchrist

01:18

@Cerberus I found this useful and interesting for something silly I was doing.

I was trying to figure out how to say Charlie’s Dragon, starting with Karolus/-i and draco/-em. And then I realized I needed it in the vocative. :)

tchrist

01:44

Why is there nothing in the world so cute as a baby kitten?

Why do small helpless things — babies, kittens, puppies, pandas in baby form — turn even the most cynical human into a helpless wreck? Why don’t we have the same reaction to a baby lizard or fish or bird? What, in short, is this cuteness thing all about?

Or foals or fawns, lambs or calves.

But probably not elvers — baby eels.

Works with chicks, too, to a point.

Seems to have to be warm-blooded.

I mean, ok a baby turtle is kind of cute, and baby butterfly is definitely cute, but those are exceptions.

Not so big on pollywogs, either.

MετάEd

02:00

►

He asks why people are obsessed with taking AP classes but doesn't present the simple economic argument: they function as free college credits, which reduces your total cost of college. This is the law of unintended consequences at work.

tchrist

Didn’t seem to work for me.

I have 183 undergraduate credits of the 120 needed for graduation, plus the requisite 30 grad credits for the MS. In 6 years.

Some of the ugrad credits were from high school work, of course.

There was just too much that was interesting.

You have to be careful when you do that to make sure they don’t accidentally graduate you prematurely.

Noah

Hi

What do you call a time that's fixed between two parties?

I cannot make it at the [ ] time?

tchrist

Define fixed.

Define parties.

We aren’t talking Congressional Reconciliation, I hope?

Noah

You set up a time with a person, say, 9:30.

Now you want to say that the suggested time doesnt work you

tchrist

Yes, and?

Noah

02:08

Is there a better word than suggested?

Bradd Szonye

It depends on how formal you want to be, I guess.

You could say, “I can't make it at the agreed-upon time.”

or “I can't make it at that time”

or “Sorry, I can't make it at 9:30 after all”

Need context to know what makes the most sense.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

02:30

@Noah the proposed time.

Mitch

@Noah "That time doesn't work for me."

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

Pollywog-a-doodle all the day.

Mitch, Mitch, he's a stitch / only Mitch can scratch our itch

Bradd Szonye

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 That's right if they're still trying to work out the proposed time.

I wasn't sure whether he's talking about rejecting a proposed time or canceling an already agreed upon time.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@BraddSzonye I was merely answering the question of is there a better word than suggested.

Better is, of course, subjective.

What was in your basagna?

Cerberus

@tchrist That's a scary document!

Mitch

02:42

What's basagna?

Cerberus

It would be "draco Caroli".

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@tchrist I saw a painting at a Mexican restaurant that featured some children under what appeared to be a large aloe vera. The title was Nunca Pescados, which Google translates to never fish. Is that correct?

Cerberus

@tchrist The absurd tyranny of copyright. It is so wrong and perverse I have no words.

Bradd Szonye

02:56

@Mitch “basagna” is how some people pronounce the “bszonye” in my email address.

It's properly “B zonnie” but I find the “basagna” whimsical and charming.

tchrist

@Cerberus Yes, I know; that I knew without looking at anything. But I wanted to make it a diminutive, and was worried I had forgotten something.

@Cerberus What do you mean, the Bibliography?

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 No.

Carlos Bousoño

Carlos Bousoño Prieto (Boal, Asturias 9 de mayo de 1923) es un poeta y crítico literario español. Biografía Nació en Boal, Asturias, en 1923. A los dos años sus padres se trasladaron a Oviedo, donde transcurrieron su niñez y adolescencia. Estudió los dos primeros años de la carrera de Filosofía y Letras en Oviedo y se trasladó a Madrid a los diecinueve años. En 1946 se licenció en la Universidad Central (hoy Complutense) con Premio Extraordinario. Se doctoró en Filosofía y Letras en 1949 en esa misma universidad, con una tesis doctoral (la primera sobre un escritor vivo en España) sobre l...

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Spanish has two words where we use only one: fish. It’s like how we have cow and beef, and they have only vaca (well, or carne de vaca).

A pez (plural peces) are what you call them when they are the creature, swimming and alive or washed up on the shore dead.

But the verb pescar meaning to fish yields an adjective pescado, and once your fish has been fished and turned into a dish, it becomes known as a pescado. So pescados are what you eat, while peces are what they were before being captured and prepared.

Bradd Szonye

Speaking of that: Are our animal/meat words an English/French class distinction thing?

tchrist

Una pez is feminine, BTW, while the noun un pescado is of course masculine. If you had a una pez pescada, a "fished fish" so to speak, you would have to follow normal concordance with the head noun.

@BraddSzonye Oh, I think even people who didn’t take French class use them.

Bradd Szonye

I mean, etymologically.

tchrist

That’s the tale.

It’s a bit more complicated, but basically correct.

Bradd Szonye

03:11

Cow, calf, pig, deer sound Germanic. Beef, veal, pork, venison sound Latinate.

tchrist

It was definitely wanting to appear sophisticated under the Norman Conquest the produced the creole we call Middle English.

Bradd Szonye

So I always guessed that the food words were some sort of Norman register difference.

tchrist

But in both languages, you just used the same word for the critter and the food.

It was only with class-related diglossia that things got split up.

Bradd Szonye

I seem to recall thinking of an example where both words were Anglo or both French, but I can't remember it now.

tchrist

Of course, modern French has changed words compared with the Old Norman French we got.

So it’s veau for veal, etc.

Bradd Szonye

03:14

It's handy for ordering food in French or Italian. Everything's cognate.

Except pollo. Although that's poultry.

tchrist

There’s one case where it went the other way.

We raise pigeons (< Fr) but eat squab (< unknown, but probably Scandihoovian).

Raise squid, eat calamares or calamari.

Raise snails, eat escargot.

We pick the foreign name for the food.

Well, except frog legs.

There’s something about rabbit, but I forget. I think that for some people, coney is the food word.

Bradd Szonye

Yes, that sounds right.

tchrist

That one was from cunīculus, but took a very very long time getting here.

Etymology: The current form represents OFr. conil, connil, cogn. w. Pr. conil, Sp. conejo, Pg. coelho, Ital. coneglio:-L. cunīcul-us rabbit (also burrow, underground passage, military mine), according to ancient authors a word of Spanish origin. The OFr. pl. (with l suppressed) coniz, later conis, gave an Eng. pl. conys, conies, and this a singular cony, conie. The ME. cunin, konyne, conyng was a. OFr. conin, connin, Anglo-Fr. coning, a parallel form to conil, which gave also MDutch conijn, Dutch konijn, and, with a for o, LG. kanîn, whence mod.G. dim. kaninchen. In Eng. the form cunyng, cu…

Bradd Szonye

Interesting!

I hate it when I'm stuck in the uncomfortable position of defending something I don't really agree with because somebody starts arguing passionately against something I'm merely reporting or playing Devil's Advocate about.

tchrist

Sigh.

Bradd Szonye

03:23

0

Q: Student Association or Students Association

We are forming a new organization which is going to be named either “Nepalese Students Association” or “Nepalese Student Association”. I am confused on which one is the grammatically correct form? Student or Students?

tchrist

How many times must we answer this question?

7 times?

7 times 7?

Bradd Szonye

No kidding.

tchrist

No, not even 7 times that will suffice.

plays Devil’s Advocate

Sorry, Scripture reference.

Bradd Szonye

I mentioned briefly that there's a trend of using apostrophe-less plural possessives in noun adjuncts, and somebody started grumping at me about it, calling it incorrect and such.

I could not seem to make the point that, no, it's not what I'd personally write, but there's a growing trend and some mixed acceptance of it.

As a descriptivist, I find the trend interesting. But I don't really want to get into an argument about it!

By the way, I have this weird thing of getting descriptivist and prescriptivist mixed up.

I almost typed the wrong one above.

MετάEd

Spaghettification. My new favorite word.

@Noah "agreed upon"?

@tchrist I thought it was seventy times seven.

I can't seem to visualize how many fingers and toes man must have had 2000 years ago to make that sensible. Or the son of man.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

03:40

@tchrist okay. So what does the painting title mean?

Time for bed.

MετάEd

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 "Cocinar Mejor Que Nunca Pescados" = "Cooking -- Better Than Ever -- Fish"

literally "Better Than Never"

tchrist

04:00

@MετάEd right

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 It means that these guys were never fished.

They were never a meal.

It’s ambiguous whether that’s a noun or an adjective, both in the masculine plural, but in this case, it doesn’t matter because it winds up being the same thing.

Never got-fished, or never dish-fishes.

Cerberus

@tchrist Right, diminutives are scary in Latin. There are tons of possibilities, and yet only one or two are used per word. I just look them up...

And that copyright stuff was about your horrible experience at Walmart.

MετάEd

04:28

@Cerberus Diminutives are especially scary at recess. You should always search them for weapons.

Bradd Szonye

04:38

Well, crap. Just lost one of my better answers to a deleted question.

The one about curvy women.

Lost 68 rep too, but mostly bummed because I thought it was one of my better posts.

Cerberus

05:30

@BraddSzonye Poor you. Ask a question to which your answer is the answer, and post it there?

Gigili

08:21

Hiya. Does the phrase "some bold mistranslations" make sense to you?

skullpatrol

08:45

As always, context is king; so yes, it could make "sense."

from skullpatrol

:-)

skullpatrol

09:10

Interesting

for those interested.

@MετάEd nice avatar

Andrew Leach

09:36

@skullpatrol Not really something to celebrate. Why not have fireworks on All Saints' Day instead?

skullpatrol

@AndrewLeach Tradition

Andrew Leach

How long does Trick or Treat have to happen before it's a tradition? And why is that worth doing anyway?

skullpatrol

to each their own...

Andrew Leach

0

Q: What is to use commas and apostrophes?

"Halloween: the one day where we encourage children to accept candy from strangers, go to strangers' homes, and vandalize property and terrorize people if they don't get their own way." Original quote by Yvette Colomb I also notice grammar checks often rebuke my apostrophe placements. I a...

grammar punctuation comma apostrophe

skullpatrol

10:59

!!wiki Halloween

KitSox

Halloween

Halloween or Hallowe'en (; a contraction of "All Hallows' Evening"), also known as All Hallows' Eve, is a yearly celebration observed in a number of countries on October 31, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Hallows' Day. It initiates the triduum of Hallowmas, the time in the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead, including saints (hallows), martyrs, and all the faithful departed believers.Don't Know Much About Mythology: Everything You Need to Know About the Greatest Stories in Human History but N

Andrew Leach

Yes. The pumpkins are supposed to ward off evil spirits.

skullpatrol

:D

and they make great pies :D

skullpatrol

11:18

!!wiki pumpkin pie

KitSox

Pumpkin pie

Pumpkin pie is a traditional sweet dessert, often eaten during the fall and early winter, especially for Thanksgiving and Christmas in the United States and Canada. The pumpkin is a symbol of harvest time and featured also at Halloween. The pie consists of a pumpkin-based custard, ranging in color from orange to brown, baked in a single pie shell, rarely with a top crust. The pie is generally flavored with nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, and ginger. This pie is often made from canned pumpkin or packaged pumpkin pie filling (spices included), usually from varieties of Cucurbita moschata. Prep...

Hugo

11:56

1

Q: What Indian words appear in cricket's vocabulary?

One of the things I find surprising is that India seems to have had little influence on the vocabulary of cricket. Notwithstanding India being arguably the world's greatest cricketing nation, I can't immediately think of any examples of cricket jargon which come out of India. Can anyone else?

etymology british-english indian-english

asking for a list?

Andrew Leach

Yes. But Not Constructive isn't a reason any more.

Matt Эллен

I thought that.

skullpatrol

I thought you would think that :D

Mitch

12:20

I didn't think of that.

@BraddSzonye That's funny, you don't look Italian.

skullpatrol

I didn't think that you didn't think of that.

Mitch

@Hugo Ya know, though lists are supposed to be not good here ("it's too hard to find a definitive answer", or some such rationalization), even regular one word answers are problematic. So big deal, I say, would a few list answers really hurt?

Andrew Leach

At least single word requests are all (or nearly all, or should be all) synonyms.

Mitch

@skullpatrol well played. I sincerely did not consider the possibility of such a response.

skullpatrol

Is there a single word synonym for synonym?

@Mitch thanks :-)

Mitch

12:31

@skullpatrol Sure. Look it up on ELU or a thesaurus. Something like 'analog'

Andrew Leach

Analogue. FTFY.

skullpatrol

equivalent?

Mitch

@AndrewLeach ha ha...no. dialog, analog, dema... OK you got that one. log. just plain log.

skullpatrol

uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061019030357AAub50B

Mitch

6

Q: Are there by chance any synonyms for "synonym"?

I was discussing with some friends about synonyms when we found, that ironically nobody of us knew any synonyms to the word "synonym" itself. Are there any?

synonyms

@AndrewLeach some are for antonyms. most SWRs are for single words where a longer description is given.

Andrew Leach

12:48

@Mitch At least the answers to single word requests are all (or nearly all, or should be all) synonyms. [That's what I meant!]

Matt Эллен

hipponym

Andrew Leach

Champion.

Matt Эллен

:D

wonders never cease

Bradd Szonye

@Mitch I'm actually a quarter Italian! Mostly look Irish though.

Andrew Leach

@MattЭллен I thought you might be too young for that reference...

Matt Эллен

12:52

I know of it, but I've never seen it

Andrew Leach

Casey Jones; Belle and Sebastian; Zorro...

Bradd Szonye

@AndrewLeach I think most of the problematic lists now fall under Too Broad or Primarily Opinion-Based.

Cerberus

14:19

Yo.

Matt Эллен

Yo.

Andrew Leach

Yoyo.

Cerberus

14:38

How's it hangin?

Andrew Leach

I refer the honourable gentleman to the answer I gave earlier.

Cerberus

So ups and downs?

Andrew Leach

Seems to be. Motivation is hard to maintain.

If it can get started at all.

Cerberus

Quite.

For what, exactly?

Andrew Leach

The work that pays the wages that pay the bills. Application/DB support.

Cerberus

14:52

Ah, that.

Today's work day is almost over, and then only one more day before the weekend.

Andrew Leach

Almost is relative. You're an hour ahead.

Hmm. Am I depressed?

Cerberus

I don't know, what do you think?

Andrew Leach

Probably SAD with the clock change.

Cerberus

SAD?

Or sad?

Andrew Leach

Seasonally Affective Disorder, or something.

Sensitive to lack of sunlight.

Cerberus

14:54

Ah.

It is possible.

Autumn kind of sucks.

You could go lie under a lamp.

Andrew Leach

I have a daylight lamp on my desk because I work in a cave.

Well, dark blue blinds closed the whole time.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@tchrist ok, thank you.

@AndrewLeach want.

Andrew Leach

Ordinary desk lamp with daylight bulb, which is slightly blue.

I bought it, and supply the bulbs. The company doesn't.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

goes to store

It's been raining here for three days.

Matt Эллен

sounds dismal

Andrew Leach

15:01

amazon.co.uk/Crompton-Daylight-Bulbs-Edison-Craftlight/dp/…

240V bulb probably won't work in the US, but that sort of thing.

tchrist

15:35

@AndrewLeach But clocks don’t change light. Only the sun can do that.

@Cerberus The regular Latin certainly was no problem figuring out draco caroli. I just got worried about how to change Charles’s to Charlie’s, so sought out the diminutives page.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@MattЭллен I've seen longer rains.

BTW, I had a dream in which you and I were in a band together with at least five others.

We had a gig to play, but had never played together before and didn't have a set list.

tchrist

@Cerberus Oh I see. That Walmart stuff is worse than wrong. It is stupid, too.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

Later, you were driving me somewhere. I wondered while you were driving if you ever forgot and drove on the left.

tchrist

Because Walmart assumes that anybody who wants to print a picture that doesn’t look like shit is stealing someone else’s works.

Like selective focus and depth-of-field control via aperture is some polymath’s mystery forever denied to mere Walmartians.

Andrew Leach

@tchrist It's all psychological. But the clock-change means that less of the working day is in daylight.

tchrist

15:41

@AndrewLeach Must be nice. I’m on a 12–16 hour workday right now. I promise the clock has nothing whatsoever to do with it.

But it never does.

I usually work about 10 hours. I do so only while I’m awake. Normally. It’s getting nebulous of late though.

Andrew Leach

If I work 9-6, it's now dark at 6pm. It wasn't a week ago.

tchrist

Oh, I don’t have working hours in that sense.

I recently cancelled a recurring meeting that they kept trying to hold at 6am though as insane.

Next week when we change our clocks, the regular staff meetings will be at 7am instead of at 7:30. Gotta love it.

Of course, I’m always awake, being it my blessing and my curse to have witnessed more sunrises in this life than sunsets.

I guess I just have meeting hours, not working hours.

Please never confuse meeting with working.

Andrew Leach

@tchrist Just stay up for 36 hours. That will put things back in sync the way they should be.

tchrist

I don’t change times with the clock, only with the sun. Anybody who wants me to do otherwise can go blow.

Hm, I wonder: is it easier time-wise to work with blokes from New Zealand than it is working with programmers who are belonging India?

I can work with the UK without any trouble, but these exotics make my life difficult.

I’d even be willing to work with Ireland. :)

It’s funny working with companies that have both Canadian and English employees at the same site.

So I’m working at Alcan in Banbury the night of the hurricane, and the Brits all think the Canadians are wild&crazy guys, while we Americans have always thought of Canadians as staid&stolid.

That’s cultural relativism for you.

Matt Эллен

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 sounds exciting! Did we play?

tchrist

15:51

It was first there at Banbury where the ex-pat Canadian there taught me how the proper English pronunciation of reserved — as in that of the English national character — was /rɪˈprɛst/. :)

Cerberus

@tchrist So what did you pick? Caroluli?

@AndrewLeach Hmm why the blinds?

Andrew Leach

Security. Don't want anyone looking in. We even have mirror-film on the outside, but it's not all that successful. Hence the blinds.

Cerberus

Wow.

Are you working in such a sensitive business?

Are you perchance D. Cameron?

Andrew Leach

The client is sensitive about its data.

Cerberus

Apparently.

Andrew Leach

16:05

But the blinds could be white. It's just the corporate colour of our host company is blue.

Cerberus

I see.

And the blue light gives you a wintry mood?

Andrew Leach

There's no light; they're opaque. White would probably be translucent, and certainly less claustrophobic.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@MattЭллен I don't recall :(

Matt Эллен

blue light helps keep you awake. this is why you should wear yellow coloured lenses for a while before bed

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 maybe we will in the future!

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@MattЭллен hooray!

Matt Эллен

16:08

are your dreams ever prophetic?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

16:21

Not usually.

Matt Эллен

Oh well :D

Andrew Leach

16:40

1

Q: The difference between a clause and a phrase?

This question What is the difference between a phrase and a clause? has an answer, with no embedded examples. The link it provides is not longer active, giving a 404 page not found error. Please don't close this as a duplicate until it, at least, has some answers. The answer to the duplicate exp...

phrases clauses

Includes its own answer in the question. Should it go to ELL?

KitFox

Hi! The interview went really well! Later!

Andrew Leach

Great :)

JSBձոգչ

congrats!

Matt Эллен

@KitFox yay!

tchrist

16:55

@Cerberus Yes.

@AndrewLeach I can see that you and I have a lot not to talk about.

Cerberus

@tchrist Good. What was it for?

tchrist

@MattЭллен Your own eyes’ lenses yellow with age, you know. But climb a mountain to 10,000 feet, or even 12 or 14, and everything lights up again as though you were a child once more, the blue component is so incredibly high.

Cerberus

Really?

tchrist

@Cerberus Someone whose online moniker was “Charlie’s Dragon” wanted to know what was wrong with being called Charles, like they do to all the waitrons at the Longdon Beefeaters Club.

I told him to consult with his future monarch, King Charles III.

Cerberus

Ugg...

tchrist

17:01

Except that there apparently isn’t going to be one.

Because Charles is considered a bad name, at least regnally.

Cerberus

Huh?

Weird Britons.

tchrist

No shit.

I think it’s dumb.

So did Elizabeth.

When informed of her father the king’s death and thus her own automatic ascension to the throne of many a land, she was asked “how she would care to be addressed” (what her regnal name was to be). She is said to have responded “Why, as Elizabeth of course!”. We cannot know what ER was thinking at the time, but several highly different scenarios behind that reply are easy to imagine.

Cerberus

Or perhaps it is more like a theoretical possibility.

tchrist

Which part?

That they get to change it?

Or that she was even consulted?

@Cerb When did one stop spelling it Karolus and start spelling it Carolus?

@Cerberus I thought of O Carolule draconis instead of O Draco Caroluli, but I didn’t think he’d catch the intentional rôle reversal. Or maybe he was raised by a whole family of dragons, and so would be O Carolule draconum. :)

Cerberus

17:16

@tchrist This.

tchrist

Yeah.

Who do they think they are, Pope?

Oh wait, they do, don’t they?

Cerberus

@tchrist I think Carolus was always the favoured Latin spelling.

@tchrist Henry VIII kicked out the Pope, so perhaps he usurped this prerogative, too.

Mitch

Some cultures consider usurping to be a good thing, like a compliment to the chef.

JSBձոգչ

Are we talking about Big Chuck again?

tchrist

@Cerberus That’s just what I was wondering about.

Cerberus

17:22

Willem Alexander was said to have "decided" to call himself Willem Alexander I instead of Willem IV last year.

So it's probably international.

Mitch

@MattЭллен Mine are. Well afterwards. Usually I can't predict what my dreams will be until I wake up.

Stack Exchange

17:34

Limerick Machine: Going out in the dark of the night Must seem like such a delight Trading in threats for sweets As...

posted on October 31, 2013 by sgdi

Going out in the dark of the night Must seem like such a delight Trading in threats for sweets As you go trick or treat All the ghouls and the ghosts and the wights

Mitch

!!wiki wight

KitSox

Wight

Wight is a Middle English word, from Old English wiht, and used to describe a creature or living sentient being. It is akin to Old High German wiht, meaning a creature or thing. In its original usage the word wight described a living human being. More recently, the word has been used within the fantasy genre of literature to describe undead or wraith-like creatures: corpses with a part of their decayed soul still in residence, often draining life from their victims. Notable examples of this include the undead Barrow-wights from the works of J. R. R. Tolkien and the level-draining wights...

Mitch

"decayed soul"?

I though souls were teflon coated. like water off a duck's back. Or, rather, like the duck's back.

Cerberus

Pick one.

Matt Эллен

17:51

!!define wight

no love :(

Mitch

18:57

@Cerberus Pick one? ...OK... uh... teflon. No, duck. Shit.

skullpatrol

Boo!

Cerberus

19:17

@Mitch Please pick something else. "Shit" is not a valid choice.

JSBձոգչ

@skullpatrol runs away and hides

skullpatrol

@JSBձոգչ come on I'm harmless :D

JSBձոգչ

@skullpatrol that's what the man in the scary van said

skullpatrol

@JSBձոգչ Indeed.

aufkag

19:40

!!define kaki

!!define anything

skullpatrol

Robusto

19:53

This whole death motif is so played. Can't we do something else this year?

skullpatrol

such as?

!!define motif

KitSox

@skullpatrol motif A recurring or dominant element; a theme.

Robusto

How humiliating to have to resort to @KitSox for vocabulary cues.

skullpatrol

!!define humiliate

KitSox

@skullpatrol humiliate (transitive) To injure a person's dignity and self-respect.

miffed

Robusto

19:57

               Across my foundering deck shone
A beacon, an eternal beam. ' Flesh fade, and mortal trash
Fall to the residuary worm; ' world’s wildfire, leave but ash:
                In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is, ' since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, ' patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
                Is immortal diamond.

Of course, I don't believe any of that.

aufkag

!!define kaki

KitSox

@aufkag kaki Alternative spelling of khaki.

skullpatrol

!!define Robusto

KitSox

@skullpatrol No definition found.

aufkag

!!define khaki

Robusto

19:58

@skullpatrol Alternative and, dare I say it, wrong.

KitSox

@aufkag khaki A dull, yellowish-brown colour, the colour of dust.

aufkag

!!define persimmon

KitSox

@aufkag persimmon A type of fruit, of orange colour, very sweet, quite astringent when immature.

Robusto

@KitSox can't spell color correctly.

skullpatrol

!!define spelling

KitSox

19:59

@skullpatrol spelling Present participle of spell.

Robusto

!!define speling

KitSox

@Robusto No definition found.

Robusto

Loser.

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